Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a porous body, a method for producing the porous body, an ink jet recording method, and an ink jet recording apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
In an ink jet recording technique, an image is formed by applying a liquid composition (ink) including a coloring material directly or indirectly onto a recording medium. At this time, curling or cockling occurs because of excessive absorption of a liquid component in the ink by the recording medium.
To prevent such a problem, there have been proposed techniques for quickly removing liquid components in the ink, such as a technique of drying a recording medium with, for example, warm air or infrared rays, and a technique for forming an image on a transfer body, drying liquid components included in the image on the transfer body with, for example, thermal energy, and then transferring the image onto a recording medium such as paper.
Another proposed technique for removing liquid components included in an image on a transfer body is a technique of bringing a roller-shaped porous body into contact with an ink image to absorb and remove liquid components from the ink image without using thermal energy (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2009-45851 and 2005-161610). Still another proposed technique is a technique of bringing a belt-shaped polymeric absorbent into contact with an ink image to absorb and remove liquid components from the ink image (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-179959).